African-American residents of Annapolis public housing live in apartments that don’t require city inspection or licenses, and the poor conditions of those homes aren’t exclusive to black people — so there can’t be racial discrimination.

Attorneys representing the city, Mayor Gavin Buckley and the Housing Authority of the City of Annapolis and its executive director raised those arguments and others as they responded for the first time to an expansive federal lawsuit alleging that the city looked the other way for decades as its public housing declined to dangerous conditions.

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They now want U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake to dismiss the complaint because they say its OK for Annapolis to treat its public housing communities differently than all other rental properties. It’s not a discriminatory practice, they argue, and that claims made under the Civil Rights Act and other federal statutes are invalid.

The attorneys responded to allegations outlined in the federal lawsuit filed by Annapolis attorney Joseph Donahue on behalf of 29 residents of five public housing properties. They said Donahue’s complaint does not show that the city or housing authority treat black public housing tenants differently than other public housing tenants.

“There is no allegation that Caucasian residents in HACA housing are treated differently than African-American residents in HACA under the policy at issue,” the city’s attorneys wrote. "The City’s licensing actions did not have a racially disparate effect,” the housing authority’s lawyer argued.

When Donahue filed the federal lawsuit, he said he was seeking immediate and lasting change. He hoped the alarming allegations would prompt the city and HACA to take responsibility and act right away.

And while a “motion to dismiss” is a common feature in any civil or criminal court case, Donahue said the responses suggest "that the city is going to hunker down and fight their responsibility.”

The 29 tenants of five of the properties owned and exclusively managed by the Housing Authority — Newtowne 20, Harbour House, Eastport Terrace, Morris H. Blum Senior Apartments and Robinwood — claim the city has lower health and safety standards for the public housing communities. They are primarily occupied by African Americans, the lawsuit claims, because of policies of urban renewal decades ago that demolished many historic black neighborhoods.

Annapolis does not license or inspect HACAs properties. It requires every other landlord in the city to go through an inspection process to obtain a license to rent their properties. The fact that the city has for decades employed lesser standards for housing authority properties has led those units to fall into disrepair — with mold, sewage leaks and water damage proliferating, the complaint alleges.

However, that longstanding practice is completely legal, argued their respective attorneys.

Ernest I. Cornbrooks IV and Michael Brooks Rynd are representing Buckley and the city. Carrie Blackburn Riley is representing HACA and Wilbourn, who plans to leave her job when her contract expires in October. Attorney’s from Maryland Legal Aid’s Anne Arundel County Office, Lisa Sarro and Kathleen Hughes, joined on as co-counsel for the HACA tenants.

The city’s and HACA’s attorney’s argument is based on a segment of the Maryland Housing and Community Development Article, which authorizes local governments to “make exceptions to its sanitary, building, housing, fire, health, subdivision, or other similar laws, rules, regulations” for housing authority properties.

“The General Assembly expressly granted the discretion to the City to determine how and when to apply its code, rules and regulations," the city’s attorneys wrote.

Riley leaned on the same section of state law when she represented HACA in the Maryland District Court in Annapolis during a contested failure to pay rent lawsuit. Administrative Judge John McKenna ruled in favor of the public housing resident who the authority sued, claiming she fell behind on rent.

McKenna said the housing authority could not access a speedy eviction docket because it was not licensed.

Because his ruling for LaDawn Camp, also a plaintiff on the federal lawsuit, McKenna dismissed hundreds of failure to pay rent lawsuits against HACA tenants. If upheld, the move could hinder HACAs ability to quickly settle rent disputes and slash their operating budget.

Riley has filed a notice of appeal to the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County.

The complaint also alleged that Buckley and HACA CEO Beverly Wilbourn conspired with the City and HACA to suspend inspections and decrease the quality of housing. First, the attorneys said that Buckley and Wilbourn could not conspire with agencies they were a part of.

Then, they argued that the legal definition of conspiracy means two or more parties collaborating to create a plan to commit an unlawful act and because Maryland law says cities can bend the rules for housing authorities, nothing illegal has occurred.

Also, the attorneys argued, Buckley and Wilboun’s names should be stricken from the lawsuit because the allegations of wrongdoing relate to them only in their official capacity and as such they should be considered part of the City and HACA, not individuals.

Riley cited previous cases suggesting that leveling punitive damages against a public body only hurts the greater public. "No benefit would be served by forcing HACA, a government funded entity, to pay punitive damages,” she wrote.

As for the mold, Riley wrote that it “may be unsightly and undesirable,” but the tenants have shown no legal “right to be free of it." “It is undisputed science that mold and humidity are ubiquitous in the ambient air,” she wrote. “(Tenants’) demand that HACA exclude the natural environment out of Plaintiffs’ home is unreasonable and not supportable.”

The complaint alleged that the health of many of the tenants had suffered as a result of the poor air quality resulting from band-aid fixes for mold-ridden apartments.

Riley declined to comment for this article. Mitchelle Stephenson, city spokeswoman, said the mayor and city council were aware of their attorneys’ responses.

Donahue declined to comment on the arguments written by city and HACA attorneys, saying he would file a response in about 10 days. In the meantime, he said, his clients and other HACA residents are "just sitting around waiting for” meaningful change.

“I’m sorry to see that their only substantive response here is that our tenants don’t belong in federal court and they want to dismiss the claims," Donahue said, "in light of the fact that their resolution in June saying the tenants are right, we should inspect.”